Four students from the Daniels College of Business of the University of Denver earned first place in the Aspen Institute’s 2012 Business and Society International MBA Case Competition, taking home a grand prize of $20,000 and an additional $1,000 to donate to the nonprofit of their choice.

The winning group included MBA students David Lashen and Andy Reger, MS student Qionglin Dai, and International MBA student Peter Knox. The team took first place in the first, internal round of the competition at the Daniels College of Business in March, and was selected as one of five student teams — out of 25 teams from top business schools around the world — to travel to New York City on April 13.

During the final round, teams presented their ideas to a panel of judges including senior corporate executives from the Yale School of Management, BNY Mellon and Marsh & McLennan, among other organizations. Daniels went up against teams from the business colleges at Temple University, University of Notre Dame, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Curtin University.

The case study was produced by the Yale School of Management in conjunction with Tecnológico de Monterrey. It put students in the shoes of Manuel Gómez Peña, director of sustainability for Walmart de México y Centroamérica, as he considers future renewable energy projects and investments across Mexico. Students examined Walmart’s policy of requiring that sustainability projects meet the same investment criteria as other projects.

To help Walmart de México achieve its goal of 50 percent renewables by 2015, the Daniels team recommended Walmart continue to aggressively pursue investments in energy efficiency, make modest investments in solar (and increase that level of investment after 2017, when projections show solar pricing rivaling the cost of electricity), and pursue large-scale renewable power-purchase agreements.

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